Administration planning for a reorganization involving USDA

The Trump administration is planning a government reorganization report that would include shifting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from the Agriculture Department to the Health and Human Services Department, Politico reported Wednesday.

The Politico story also said that the report would propose cuts at the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department, but it did not mention age-old proposals to move the U.S. Forest Service from USDA to the Interior Department or to combine USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, which oversees meat, poultry, processed eggs and catfish with the inspection activities of the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies.

There have also been proposals to combine the Foreign Agricultural Service with the Foreign Commercial Service at the Commerce Department.

Each of these proposals has been highly controversial in the past, but combined would shrink USDA because the SNAP program is the single largest budget item, the Forest Service has the most employees of any USDA division and FSIS also employs a large force that inspects meat production on a daily basis.

But the prospects for these proposals are questionable because they would have to be approved by Congress.